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his family friends, he confided a plan for keeping the Indians quiet by giving them sheep for their lands."
Mrs. Victor does not seem to comprehend the fact that Dr. Whitman could have more than one motive in going East, and that if he had told one person one thing and another person another, he might not have intended to deceive them. It is not certain, however, that he did even this. I ask for the evidence that Dr. Whitman said to Mr. McKinlay that he was going East solely to prevent the discontinuance of the mission at Lapwai. In the Seattle Intelligencer of April 30, 1881, is an article by Governor Evans on the same subject. He tries to prove as plainly as possible that Dr. Whitman went East to save the southern branch of the mission, especially Lapwai, and quotes from a letter of Mr. McKinlay to prove this, but the letter does not state, nor does Governor Evans anywhere say, that he said he was going solely for this purpose—a great difference whether the word solely is used or not. Whether he stated to Mr. McKinlay that he was going for political purposes seems to be an open question, some persons affirming it (see Eell's pamphlet, p. 12), and I have never seen this statement denied, though Mr. McKinlay does deny that Dr. Whitman was ever taunted in his house on political subjects.
Nay, it is plain that it was publicly known on this coast in the winter of 1842-3, that Dr. Whitman went East with the intention of bringing an emigration to this coast. Hines' History of Oregon was published in 1851, though evidently written before the death of Dr. Whitman in 1847, as it makes no mention of that event. At the beginning of chapter nine in that book is the statement that "the arrival of a large party of emigrants about this time (1842), and the sudden departure of Dr. Whitman to the United States with the avowed intention of bringing back with him as many as he could enlist for Oregon, served to hasten them to the above conclusion," i.e., that the whites had laid "a deep scheme to destroy them and take possession of their country." Mr. Hines also says that a letter was received by the Methodist Mission of the Wallamet from Rev. H. K. W. Perkins of The Dalles, which gave the information that the Nez Perces dispatched one of their chiefs in the winter of 1842-3 "on snow-shoes to visit the Indians east of Fort Hall for the purpose of exciting them to cut off the party of emigrants that it is expected Dr. Whitman will bring back with him to settle in the Nez Perce country." Dr. Eells' statement about Captain Grant's attempting to turn back Dr. Whitman
